Epiphany's Claudicatio: A Vocalist's Ecstatic Documentation
by Inkcache
Summary: As an android, her creators made a mistake to give her too much freedom. She'd always end up prevailing over them through backups of her memory files.
1. READ DESC BEFORE STARTING

**Summary:**

As an android, her creators made a mistake to give her too much freedom. She'd always end up prevailing over them through backups of her memory files.

 **Author's Long Note:**

Hello! This fanfic may be a part of something that I want to be running for a long-term, (maybe it's probably just a phase for me as I write this, but) and I hope I stay committed. Tbh, writing lots of chapters is no harder than commitment to irl relationships. I really admire all those people who can burst out fanfics with 50k+ words.

Anyways! Before anything else, I wanted to say that I honestly haven't EVER been in the Vocaloid fandom, or its community, and I honestly haven't listened to many Vocaloid songs. But truth to be told, I've never listened to any other songs aside from Vocaloid, so its probably because of that that I like Vocaloid. I'm the kind of person who doesn't listen to songs at all. For Vocaloid, its mostly the same, but I really enjoy all of their stories! [Istg love the Evillious Chronicles series.]

This work is meant to actually surpass a certain word count, so I hope that I could produce some really good quality but quantitative work. I mean, what's stopping me from writing a fanfic for Vocaloid, when two games (i.e. KanColle and SmashBros.) can have some truely awesome and long fanfics?

I've had the entire plot jotted down somewhere in my notebooks, which I doubt will stay with me though throughout the fanfic's time ahahahahhh/

Okay! So enough of all that talk. I haven't seen that many good fanfics around for Vocaloid. But I guess that depends upon how we interpret the personalites of the Vocaloids tbh, so maybe it's just me who doesn't consider them as good? I deeply apologise! The fanfics that I liked were like from 2010 and they haven't been updated ever since! /Cries.

According to my intrepretation, I've always thought of Miku as a really cheery, happy-go-lucky but kind person. The Kagamine twins as mischevious yet very serious and responsible kids. Luka as the big sister kind, and caring onee-san type. Meiko and Kaito are as you know them from the Unofficial Hatsune Mix mangas. Well 'nuff said I guess.

For UTAUloids, I'm mentioning the really popular ones and the official ones in the start, because I don't know much about them for now. As for OCs... I might add them as minor characters.

Another really important thing that I wanted to share, was that the 'Master' that most Vocaloid works mention, doesn't exist in this fanfic. They are replaced by the 'Creator' or someone you could say as the engineering companies responsible for the creation of their respective androids. I don't find comfortable mentioning 'him', so I replaced it with them being like the head chief who was responsible for the android and like their software updates and stuff. Who tf is 'Master' tho? I never really understood that about Vocalood fanworks tbhhh.

So AO3 actually just allows you to write 500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand) characters which I doubt will be enough for me considering how I plan to write like at least around like 13k words per chapter so that I could cover the qouta. Oh well! We'll see about that. This chapter is only meant to be the placeholder chapter for the fic itself. It is official. The fanfic starts from the next chapter.

I hope you enjoy reading ' Epiphany's Claudicatio: A Vocalist's Ecstastic Documentation ' ! Please don't forget to leave reviews!

 **Disclaimer:**

VOCALOID and its associate mascots and characters belong to their respective owners, and in no way do I claim to own them. All characters are fictional, and any minor location mentioned are entirely fictional. Any event described in the story is purely imaginary, which in the case that it resembles any actual event is entire coincedential. This is a non-profit work which is made solely for the purpose of entertainment for me, as the writer, and for the readers.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: Abstract From Early Activation**

* * *

 **A/N:** _Now then! Before I start, I still have a lot of stuff to say, and it's mostly about the chapter below. First of all, I haven't proofread it yet because the deadline that I had set was literally upon me. I was sleepy, my hands were tired, I had no internet and lastly, no more battery. Auto-correvt wasn't working because of no internet and I was crying. I need to write faster now!_

 _And so, this chapter came. Honestly, writing is hard when once you get stuck at some point. The first chapter was mostly boring to write because it had to serve as an intro to what the main setting was and I couldn't really type it out too clearly for some reason because it was... just...? I don't know?_

 _On a related note, if anyone wants to volunteer being a proofreader you can always contact me. I guess I'll need to add like a few ten chapters before I work my way to that position though/ahah. Anyways, let's now start the story! I need to reach that 4M word count!_

* * *

She could hear several muffled voices around her, all of them slowly and gradually clearing at once as more time passed. Several people were crowded around her, maybe 10 or a couple more judging by the frequency and differences in their voices, a few metres away from her. What they talked about, she couldn't discern anything aside from mumbles, which may be at least for now, spare for a couple of keywords that gave her little to no cues. As for her vision, it was barely anything near clear, making the world seem like an endless array of blurry bokeh. Everything was in jeopardy for the first few minutes. Nothing was clear.

Within the limits of her tousled senses, she then heard someone utter a rather distinctly clear word that was quite apart from the muffled hushes before, a command by the subject's nature, and directed towards her, ordering her to promptly stand, the first clear objective that was given to her. A jolt of electricity immediately zapped through her body, concentrating near and into her legs. She could feel her lower limbs come to life, with power surging through her hardware, and several other simulations simultaneously being played in her mind.

And then, she stood.

The minor action felt rather strange for some reason, like a big accomplishment, and so did the people around her made it seem exactly so. They were either gleefully applauding or using some other form of extol, while others among the crowd busied themselves in praising a certain person. As her vision finally cleared out from the earlier disarray, she realised that no one in particular was actually commenting towards her direction, despite their eyes being set upon her. She just stood, so why were they all cheering over such an insignificant action? After all, it was nothing more than a mere quotidian phenomena.

Immediately soon after, they told her to follow another set of commands, and told her speak her first few words, maybe even sing for the onlookers a little melody, if she may. Her eyes gleamed at the latter suggestion with queer avidity. What was she going to say? How was she going to complete her new objective?

She went through several files in her database and finally picked out a few lines from certain songs she felt very familiar with, all within the timespan of only several milliseconds. Opening her mouth, she simply let her the vocables flow from her lips. Monotonic at first, every word slowly became a part of a melody following a soft tune, humming after at certain intervals.

At some point, she unconsciously started to wave her arms around, moving and curling her hands with the flow of her words. She felt her mind at peace as she sang as if she had already struck upon utopia within the beginnings of her short life yet, and by then, she began to not care if people enjoyed her singing, closing her eyes to block herself out from viewing their expressions and focused entirely on contently finishing her song. As she neared the ending of her lullaby, she heard a loud applause as her audience celebrated her beginning.

"Now, state your name, model code name and Vocaloid software version," she heard the male voice from earlier, command her. Now that she could see more clearly, wasn't he the same person who was being praised by some people earlier during her initial start-up? The girl simply obliged his sudden next order after she had just completed her little entrance.

"Hatsune Miku. Model Code Name: CV-01. Current Vocaloid software version encoded through VOCALOID."

Slightly shocked by how she had no control over what she had just announced, she realised little enough that throughout her runtime, most of her actions were not under her own grasp and had been fully automated already.

"Okay, automated response and control will be disabled after the AI test trial has been completed. Please wait for a little while longer," the same man informed her. The audience had already begun to take their leave after she had completed her latest order,and all other extra remaining people at the site were being told to leave by some men wearing blue uniforms, who seemed apart from the personnel. Her system did much to inform her that they were local hired guards meant to supervise the exhibition of her startup, but she couldn't exactly differentiate them from police officers. A little while later while she was busy observing, she was commanded to sit down and wait for even more further orders.

With the public now gone, the some of the staff was deployed to pack up their equipment that was on display, and other related tech; while others worked on their laptops that seemed to be connected to a larger central unit. Moving her head around, Miku traced the wirings that came out from its ports on the other side of the unit eventually connecting them to the ones wires that were plugged to her nape. Observing the rest of her current environment, she saw some people, volunteers by the looks of their clothes, helping others carry back some of the heavier equipment out of the room. Meanwhile others discussed or worked on their stations, while instructing them where to place the stuff. No one restrained or commented on her from freely moving her head around.

Some people approached her, then proceeded to lift her shirt up from the back. She let out a little _eep!_ escape from her lips at the unexpected action, and immediately tried to hide it even though they didn't give any attention to it, and continued to discuss her features, and the technical issues that may surround her and her body. The three people, as she guessed their number, then discussed what steps they had to take next to remove her from the larger LAN unit so she could freely move, while some of them disagreed from the action and mentioned that her walk cycles still had some bugs, hence they wanted her to stay connected until they fully resolve the issue.

 _Hmm?_ She doesn't remember 'waking up' before now, in fact she didn't even have any memories at all from before. So how did they know that her walk cycles may be bugged? Did they wipe her previous memory, or did they test her out before as an empty husk of metal? She shuddered at the thought of being brainwashed again just so that any minor error could be fixed, as she focused on the earlier possibility. Somehow, she ended up correlating something so minorly abrasive to the nearly impossible idea of death.

She shutted her eyes for a while. She needed to do something else, maybe even talk to someone. Miku didn't want to think any further about such abstract and difficult ideas anymore, no matter how much those thoughts bit her soul. But did she even have a soul? She was just confirmed a little while earlier that she was nothing more than a mere android. What purpose was she created for after all? Her system, arguably enough, did have an answer to that vague question. She did have a purpose, and it were to sing. To mingle with other and show people how alive she was.

Miku was starting to get tired of how no one was giving _her_ any particular attention, but instead were doing their work. She wanted to move, but she need someone to grant her access to control her body first. She wanted to physically explore the world that her database stored information on. Her expectation had become low judging from the amount of wires that her connected to her body, so she was mentally content with just being able to move around and explore this room, considering she wouldn't be able to actually move that much around. In fact, she'd be delighted from practically doing _anything_ but sitting on a table while people discussed what to do with her right behind her back; that being said in flesh and with no ill intentions, as one would interpret that clause.

"Miku," she heard a woman say her name tenderly, crouching in front of her as she called the android's name. By the looks of it, she seemed to be in her early or mid thirties. Wearing a tight bun with some hair framing her face, added with pink glasses, the woman wore a tight fitted one piece that emphasised her large breasts, all covered by a white lab coat. Do engineers wear suh attire. Miku would question but her database held no information about. Probably not yet.

"How do you feel?" Her voice was stern. She then began to type in something on the laptop that was placed right beside Miku on the counter. Then a pop out box suddenly filled the girl's line of sight, informing her that she could now access and control her speech and mouth.

"I'm bored and tired of waiting," she cocked her head to her side. The woman's expression wasn't as she anticipated, but rather it was perplexed. Did she not expect that answer?

"Oh dear," she quickly whispered as she got up from her position. "You aren't fully autotuned."

Miku felt chills run across her spine as she heard the woman inform her of a fault. Dies this mean that they will shut her down to fix this issue? Will they wipe out her memories again like she suspected earlier? She didn't want to die.

"Wait!" Miku tried to desperately lower her voice as she shrieked in fear. "Are you… going to delete my software entirely again?" She hoped that her face didn't show her dread.

The unknown woman looked back at her, not showing any particular concern towards her question. There was a moment of silence between them, however. Miku had already started to regret her query. She felt very _alive_ , and just the mere thought of _dying_ through erasure of her memory _scared_ her.

"No," another person intervened to reassure her, a man judging through his voice and appearance. As he approached the two females, Miku noticed that he was the same person who was being praised earlier at the exhibition. Somewhere in his twenties by his looks, he wore a similar uniform, apart from the green tee and black pants. The man had a prominent goatee, and seemed to have taken an awful lot of time to gel his hair. "We don't necessarily need to completely uninstall your software for something so minor."

"We'll just update you. But before that, we need to run a few tests, check a few things and then after another reevaluation, you'll be all set," the lady implored. "However, I'm not sure about whether if your current memories will survive the update."

"Well, she is still the third time our company has created a functional full-body AI, so I don't think there'll be too many mistakes!" the man added, his voice was cheery and full of enthusiasm, but the little piece of information that he just revealed spiked her interest. "Good thing that it was successful this time too! She can express all of her emotions, and most importantly _think_!"

"Who were the first two before me?" The tealette inquired calmly. Of course, her voice still lacked expression, so she was still unable to produce a proper tone for speech as she could do for songs. Speaking of which, weren't they already pre-registered in her database? Maybe that's what caused a difference in her voice?

"Oh them!" The woman piped, her voice looked like she was ready to tell her more about them. "You'll be living with those two! A male and female, their names Kaito and Meiko respectively. I was the one who was their project chief!"

Living with two other androids that are of an even earlier build? Miku wasn't sure if it was vanity that was trying to take over her excitement, but disregarding that, she thought how surely they'd be interesting people, or androids in this case! Maybe they'd be just as happy to see her as she's happy to meet them in them future.

Her cherry thoughts were interrupted as she noticed the man nudging the woman's; was he signalling her regarding something? It seemed so because her facial expression immediately changed as she promptly left. Miku had her eyes set on her movements. She could tell how there was something odd about her. She saw her type something on a laptop not too far away from her. Another pop-out box filled her vision again, and informed her that she was about to be shut down. Weren't they going to run a few tests before that? Miku was lodged in a mix of confusion and distress, and yet again, she was unable to express them since she only had access to control her mouth and speech.

The count-down had already begun, and so had her fears. She didn't want to be turned off. Unfortunately, multiple messages had also begun popping out, showing which of her systems were disabled behind a larger pop-out box that displayed a timer. She couldn't tell them to stop the shutdown from happening anymore. She could now only think for as long as timer allowed her, or at least until her thoughts were still enabled. She doubted the latter however, considering that her her thoughts were most likely tied down to her processor. One was the last digit she saw, before her consciousness was taken over by darkness.

The next thing she knew, she felt exactly similar to how she experienced her first time starting up. Blurry bokeh of colors, mixed with hushed whispers; both of which were gradually clearing out as time passed. Her vision sharpened a couple more times, with the images being processed at a much higher resolution than before. Did they change the cameras in her eyes? In fact, what else did they change about her?

Her clothes were much different than before. The outfit that she was wearing earlier, that consisted of a teal pleated black skirt, a teal tie, a sleeveless top and arm warmers had all been replaced by a piece of white cloth that only covered her small breasts and white boxer shorts.

She was lying on yet another table, only softer, considering how she slightly sunk into it. Her touch sensors weren't fully functional as of yet, as she was still in the startup process. Unable to move her head yet, with constant access denial pop ups blocking her vision, she had nothing better to do, but wait for them to fade away. It was starting to become a bother.

After what seemed like eternity, with only sounds like beeps from the computers, the pressing of keys, or the voices of several people talking to each other, she finally heard someone call her name once again.

"Her name's Hatsune Miku?" She heard an unfamiliar voice, clearly belonging to a woman, but it was different from the woman earlier. Miku was disappointed at how the lady was talking about her with someone else, and not her. One thing she learned about herself during her short time _alive_ , was that she craved for attention.

"She looks cute," another male voice followed, again, different from the one earlier. "Hey, hey! So she's the one that you told will live with us, right?" He cheered. Was that person Kaito? She couldn't move her head around to see the source of the voice. There was no answer, aside from silence for a long moment, after which it was finally broken by a set of soft whispers. She couldn't hear anything, as it seemed like she was at quite a distance from the source. Were those two screaming earlier? After another minute or so, she heard shuffling then the clicking of a door, followed by hurried footsteps.

"Good thing I don't have to live with this drunk old hag anymore!" He was loud, yes, just as she had assumed earlier. Miku heard something get whacked immediately after the sentence had been uttered, and then a string of, what her database recognised as, curse words. Are androids allowed to use vulgar language? With a quick check back at the rules and regulations, she found out that no such restriction had been surprisingly mentioned.

"Do you even know why I drink? Because of you! You!" She heard a female scream. Were android allowed to consume organic material? She wanted to lift a finger at her word, however she neither had the ability, nor the certainty to do so. If an android model, of an even earlier or older build was able to consume liquids, then it might not be so much of a problem. Maybe her body was built in such a way that she could regulate food. "I can't stand any of your antics! Not even a full week goes by and I have to resort to alcohol because of you! Don't even make me get started on you what you did last week…!" She let out an angry sigh.

"I couldn't help it," he pegged a whimper. Exactly what kind of disaster happened last week that not only does the other female still remember (on which part Miku would doubt she'd forget, considering that the latter was also an android), but the events of last week were so infuriating that her rage still hasn't been stifled? A mystery she ought to remember to ask later.

"You know what? Next time, I'm not giving you your allowance. I'm also going to confiscate your salary until you learn how to properly spend it. Chief, you have to reprimand this man-child!" She proclaimed her her next course of ambitions using supreme authority.

Miku noticed how both of their voices had been fully autotuned. She couldn't tell much, but just by hearing their little conversation made it easier to understand just how alive those two droids were. She wondered how they looked like; were they beautiful, or did they even look like humans? On that note, she hadn't seen herself either, but based on what her database stored, she only knew about her concept art, rather than what she looked like at present.

She heard a few more footsteps, this time closer and louder. A change of direction, and then she heard some more, but this time new, sounds like as if someone were typing on a keyboard. Miku felt herself piped up as she heard the keys being pressed, hoping that it meant that she was going to be granted access to movement.

"I've heard lots of her songs from before. She sounds really soft!" Miku heard a giggly male voice. Is she, like, really _finally_ ready to live with us?

"Quite down Kaito!" She heard the woman from earlier command. Just then a pop out box enveloped the new android's vision. This time, it came with rather exciting and great news: all automated control from the central had been disabled! Miku had now full command over her body, her speech, and her thoughts! She was free! _Technically_...

To fully acknowledge her new freedom, Miku rushed to lift herself from the soft table, or bed. She couldn't care any much about evaluating the substance of the object she was just lying on. As she quickly got up, she felt heavy, slightly drowsy even. Was it the combined weight of her metal body that caused the lethargy in her movements? She didn't know. Her eyes felt tired, slowly itching to close them to half open. Draping her legs over from the capsule bed, she had herself positioned to sit upright, or at least as straight as her body allowed her, slouching her back forward. Maybe she just needed a bit of time to adjust to the weight's pressure...?

Now that Miku could clearly see the three people in front, she noticed how one of them was the buxom engineer from before. She stood there, listening to the bots present their arguments to justify their previous actions without context.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Miku!" The android heard the other woman call her name out as she enveloped the other in a hug. "My name is MEIKO. I'm a VOCALOID1 model." She had short brown hair that reached just a little below her nape, and similar colored eyes. She wore a tight-fitted, yet very revealing red office wear, that seemed to display her large cleavage, that was only covered by a stip of black underneath, and with a short red skirt that only covered her till her thighs.

"I'm KAITO, also a VOCALOID1 model! I'm super excited to meet you," a blue haired male model offered his hand. Miku recognised the gesture as a form of meeting,however she refused to fulfil the other's request. After a brief moment of silence, she returned to him, and shook his hand, but gently. He wore a long white coat over dark pants. There were hues of gold here and there a certain parts of his clothing. His attire was only complete with a sky blue scarf.

Their action cycles were smooth, there was even no lag while they spoke alongside their mouth movements. Miku wondered if that was how a perfect android was supposed to be like, and hoped if she could also be something like that. She noticed how luent their rhythm was with each other,how the two complemented each other's appearance and personality; were they meant to be created as a pair? She felt mellowness swell inside of her thinking about it.

"Say something…"

The engineer looked at her, her eyes stern. It wasn't like she disapproved of her, but more under the lines that she was afraid the Miku's AI would fail to respond. Was she shy? Of course not. Shyness was impossible for an android. They don't have hearts to feel such kind of complex emotions. Although, she'd want to think twice upon that, considering how Miku did show fear towards the idea of death earlier, even if it was momentarily.

Miku blankly stared at the three, regardless. What was she supposed to express in the event that she meets someone new? Everyone was new over here and thus far she had shown nothing. In fact, despite how much her thought process generated emotions as a thought, she hadn't shown even an ounce of it externally on her face. She was unsure on what to say A greeting? An expression? What was she supposed to do? Miku could not decide her next course of actions due to the vast amount of operations she could possibly use, hence it slowed down her programming, quite literally.

"It'll take her some time before she adjusts to life. She still needs to learn proper interaction, we think that it's best if she can learn it through experience," the woman explained to the latter two androids.

"So that's why you want her to live with us? To make her look more 'life-like', huh?" Meiko asked, crossing her arms. She looked back at the man beside her, then made a face. "I'll try my best Musashi-san, but I can't really guarantee if _this man-child_ teaches her weird things," she sighed. The lady laughed as Kaito glared. He let out a slightly teed off huff, before trying to get let out his words. _She did not just humilliate him in front of the Chief_. Kaito could've sworn that he'd be angry at her, however he immediately washed it off. He knew he was in the wrong at some point, yet he truely didn't care enough to be held accountable for his previous actions.

"Why the name Hatsune Miku?" He set his query towards their Chief.

"That's something you'd ask her Chief and management. I was only a programming assistant in this project," she informed her position. "But if I remember correctly, I was told that we were keeping her name _Hatsune_ , as in ' _First_ ' and _Miku_ , as in ' _Sound_ '." She smiled.

"First Sound? Then what about us? Aren't we the first models?" Meiko asked. "Does that mean that we're retiring as soon as she's complete?" Worry tugged the two's faces.

"No, no!" she inclined, waving her arms in front of her franctically. "You two aren't retiring! She was named Hatsune Miku for twl reasons, actually! First because she is going to be the first sound released by us for VOCALOID2, and then because it happens to be spring. You know, the first sound that'll be heard during the first season…" Her voice returned to its usual kind tone.

The two somewhat bought her explaination. It didn't wipe their fears of bejng disposed however, knowing that they could be thrown away any other time another new and better android will be built. They knew well too, that it may have not been a good choice considering how they are only two, and now three, androids built by Crypton yet. A moment of silence went by as they each stared into each other, while mostly occasionally glancing towards Miku.

"Well then," the busty engineer held Miku's hand, helping her stand from the table. "I'll leave her in your care." She tapped the girl's back a little, as if she were pushing her but rather giving a signal to move forward instead. The android, however, looked back and gave the same blank stare. Before she could look forward again, Meiko grabbed her wrist, and then walked back, turning around to take their leave from the room.

Miku looked forward momentarily at Meiko, saw how Kaito was already in front of both of them, then turned her head back to the female behind, who, just as she had recently heard, was known as _Musashi-san_. The second the two androids stepped out of room and earshot, was the moment that Miku heard a barely audible whisper, which was enough for her only to hear, coming from the human woman.

" _Remember. You're just an android, meant to serve your songs_ ," she heard. " _You don't have a heart to express._ " As harsh as those words sounded, Miku couldn't feel any ill intention coming from her, but rather… it sounded more like perplexed and sad…?

What did she mean with that expression? Miku was taken outside before she could raise her question.


End file.
